Low-cost or free resources

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John Bartucz, JM, Kevin Champney

C. Low-cost or Free Resources

1. What "free" (or virtually free) resources are available to schools to improve the quality of their teaching life (i.e. work smarter using technology)? (Susan Link)
2. How can free and/or open source software be used for school management and operations purposes? [Scott McLeod]
3. What experience have we all had with using open source or online applications with our students (or adults)? [Kevin Champney]

Free Resources for Classroom (or schoolwide) Use

  1. OS4Ed - This is the only true open-source solution I have found directed specifically at the K-12 education community. From their website: "OS4ED provides world class open technology solutions to the K-12 education community that are economical, easy to use, compliant with open standards and integrated in support of effective administration, instruction and student achievement." They have two main products: Centre is a free student information system for public and non-public schools. Centre is a web-based, open source, student management product with features that include student demographic info, scheduling, grade book, attendance, report cards,eligibility, transcripts, and more. OpenIntel is more about datamining. I'm not totally sure how it works.[JB]
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> [Casey from OS4ED] We have also recently added EasyCom, a communication module that allows users to send SMS text messages to cell phones and email messages to end users. It is designed to enable critical and important communications to be sent instantly. openIntel will be fully integrated with openCentre later this year and will provide the ability to develop and run analytical reports about your school and district. We are very excited about our solutions and are working to integrate them and add more solutions as we can.
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  • We give away our base applications for free, sell support and maintenance services for an economical fee and also sell some additional modules at very affordable prices. We have demonstrated that we can save schools and districts over 50%, and often much more, by using our open source solutions. Our mission is to save schools and districts large dollar amounts associated with expensive administrative applications in the hopes that schools and districts will return those dollars to the instructional budget. Please check back to our website periodically for updates and new announcements. Thank you for including us here!
  1. Google Calendar - not only do I use this for keeping track of my own schedule, but also I have set up a Calendar for our Computer Labs that all teachers in the building can access to sign up their classes to use the open lab. It's a really easy way to coordinate the Lab schedule and has given some teachers confidence in using online applications. Several teachers in my building have started to post assignment/topic schedules for students. One of the nice features of Google Calendar is that it allows you to maintain multiple calendars each demarcated by a different color. It also interfaces with Google Mail and Google Docs and Spreadsheets pretty seemlessly. When I recieve a message in my Gmail account that includes a meeting date Gmail will ask if I want to add it to my calendar. Pretty Slick.[KC]
  2. Google Docs & Spreadsheets - I am currently on our schools Reacreditation Steering Committee. I set up Google documents for each subcommittee to use to address their set of Standards. It has really been an effective way to collaborate and has reduced the need for meetings during this arduous process. Perhaps the best result of using it with these committees is that some teachers have started to use it as a collaboration tool within their own classes. I actually just helped an English Teacher set up his 2 senior classes with Docs accounts to work on their papers. There are now several classes using Google Docs as a way to facilitate peer review and group projects. Additionally it provides students (and faculty) with online storage of their files, so that they don't have to remember their thumb drive. Yes, teenagers sometimes forget things! [KC]
  3. Gmail Now that I have too many e-mail accounts (3 different work accounts, UMN, personal accounts etc.) I have come to rely on my GMail account. Unlike the freebie version of Yahoo! Gmail has the capability of retrieving from any Pop3 account and labeling e-mails according to which account it was recieved from. It also works pretty seemlessly with Google Docs & Spreadsheets (any document or spreadsheet attachment can be opened and saved in google Docs) as well as Coogle Calendar (see above). There is also a built in chat feature, threaded and labeled listing of email exchanges, and the contacts feature is easy to use. [KC]
  4. Camstudio - this has to be one of the coolest freebies ever! It lets you record what you do on your computer and overlay an audio track. I have just started using it, but it is just an incredible way for me to put up quick tutorials on how to use our library databases or save to the network etc. Click here for a quick video tutorial. [KC]
  5. Bloglines has become indispensable for me. It is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. It makes it so much easier to follow teh blogs that I find useful including David Warlick's Blog and three of Scott's (you should really be less productive Scott, you're making the rest of us look bad :^) ) as well as my daily dose of Get Fuzzy.
  6. TeacherTube "is an online media property for people to watch and share Education videos worldwide through a Web experience for everyone." This is a new one to me, but has already proven useful. I have shared some fantastic PhotoShop Tutorials with our technology and art teachers.[KC]
  7. Open Office A free software package that includes a document creator/editor, spreadsheet program, presentation tool, math formula creator/editor, and drawing program among other things. Don't have Microsoft Office (or PowerPoint) at home? This is a great alternative! I'm not a huge fan of the presentation tool included with OpenOffice, but hopefully it will improve. Just to give you an idea of what can be done with OpenOffice , we are getting a donation of 30 used Pentium 4 Dell desktops from a major company here in Maine, unfortunately they are not coming with MS Office licenses. Install OpenOffice and Shazam! They are all set to go. The nice thing about OpenOfice is that the controls are pretty intuitive if you are familiar with MSOffice and it can save to multiple MS compatible formats. [KC]
  8. Portaportal This is a great, easy to use, site that let's you organize and store your favorite bookmarks. It's really fantastic when you are moving from computer to computer, or from school to home, or when you are traveling. It has some great applications for educators. It really works well for our teachers when they are working on a class project and want their students to use a certain set of websites. All they have to do is create a quick set of links for the project. I have actually created pages for each subject area and put links to Portaportal on the school's library page so that the librarians can put up quick links, and all the students know to go check them out as they do their research. I find it easier, much more intuitive and less intimidating for people than Webpage design. It has really been effective for us. [KC]
  9. Software for Starving Students This is a pretty interesting concept. They've bundled a bunch of free software titles that could prove useful to starving college students. Everything from file storage and Office-like programs to mutlimedia applications. I've used a bunch of the programs, some I haven't.
  10. I'm not sure how this might apply to education, but I'm about to implement CiviCRM for a local charity. http://civicrm.org/ [JohnBartucz]
  11. I have found Blogging to be an extremely effective way to get students to discuss topics, demonstrate what they know and interact in a virtual environment. I happen to use Google's free blogger, but there are plenty out there to choose from. http://www2.blogger.com/>

Other Money Savers

  1. The buying power of a larger organization, regional education technology group can reduce costs greatly. Here in Maine we have a statewide Technology group called ACTEM - Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine that enables members to purchase Software titles and hardware at reduced rates. For instance MS Office or Windows licenses are $59.
  2. Donations - again, here in maine we have a nonprofit called Ruth's Reusable Resources that takes in donated equipment and school and office supplies. Member schools can take almost anything they want for free (computers cost a little bit to cover trucking costs). I am going to help unload a tractor trailer of 300 Pentium 4 Dells this weekend complete with monitors, mice and keyboards. We can take 30 computers for $20/each.